Effective February 24, 2017, Symantec will change the categorization of googleadservices.com from Web Ads/Analytics to Technology/Internet.

This change corrects an issue that can occur when the Web Ads/Analytics category is used to block ads in policy. The current blocking behavior can result in a Google ad being rendered even though the click-through will be blocked. The optimal behavior being implemented in this update, will result in both the ad rendering and click-through being blocked, providing a more intuitive and consistent user experience.

Symantec recently collaborated with Google to ensure that Google’s various ad-related processes work as intended when access to the Web Ads/Analytics category is blocked in policy. The collaboration resulted in these conclusions:

The googleadservices.comdomain is not used to serve ads or content, therefore the current Web Ads/Analytics category is not optimal.

Access to googleadservices.comis required for a user to successfully click-through to a visible Google ad, and for Google’s AdWords conversion tracking to work properly.